Sleep Patterns and Crisis-Related Dreams During the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War
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People who feel personally affected by a global crisis have a 5% increase in nightmares, whilst concern raises them by 2%.
This study examines how two major crises—the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War—impacted sleep patterns and dreams in Portugal’s general population. Researchers analyzed how these crises shaped dream recall, nightmare frequency, and emotional dream content, revealing key psychological differences between pandemic and war-related dreams.
What did they do?
Researchers surveyed 1,020 participants during the COVID-19 pandemic and 703 participants during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Participants answered questions about:
Sleep patterns (e.g., sleep duration, quality, awakenings, daytime sleepiness).
Dream recall frequency and whether they had crisis-related dreams.
Emotional content of dreams, including distress, fear, sadness, and anger.
Life disruption, measured by how much the crisis affected their physical health, employment, finances, social life, and mental well-being
What did they find?
Both crises disrupted sleep, but the pandemic had a greater impact. 48.6% of participants reported worse sleep during COVID-19, compared to 31.9% during the war. Dream recall was also higher in the pandemic (34% vs. 16.6%).
Each crisis triggered different emotions in dreams. Pandemic dreams were filled with anxiety, featuring themes of contagion, illness, and isolation. In contrast, war-related dreams were more likely to evoke sadness and anger, often involving physical discomfort, pain, coldness, or paralysis.
Dreams reflected the level of life disruption caused by each crisis. 73% of crisis-related dreams were nightmares, and they were more common during the pandemic (27.3% vs. 18.2% in the war). People facing greater real-life hardship (e.g., job loss, financial instability) were more likely to have frequent nightmares and distressing dreams.
Vicente, H. T., Becker, J. P., Sequeira, J., & Farate, C. (2025). Sleep patterns and crisis-related dreams during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war. Dreaming. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/drm0000305